fifty years since Ginsberg's Howl.

It's 50 years since Howl and I wanna go to San Francisco.

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at
dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the
machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high
sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz"
ALLEN GINSBERG

"Veterans of the original recital, which saw the poet sing his lines like a synagogue cantor as his confidence grew, while Kerouac chanted "Go, go, go" from the front row of the audience, still recall a sense of taking part in history. The feeling that youth and nonconformity were at last striking back engulfed the Bay area, then the US and much of the western world."

"I saw the best meals of my generation
destroyed by the madness of my brother.
My soul carved in slices
by spikey-haired demons."
LISA SIMPSON

Howl for Now is at the Clothworkers' Centenary Concert Hall, Leeds University, at 6.30pm on Friday. Free tickets, first come, first served. Email: s.wheater@leeds.ac.uk